Fioretta

Post-screening discussion with director Matthew Mishory and film subject Randy Schoenberg

This enthralling and personal documentary takes as its subject nothing less than the depths and expanses of Jewish history itself, while also focusing on the contemporary relationship of a father and son connecting through their shared fascination with the past. Fioretta follows E. Randol (Randy) Schoenberg, a Los Angeles–based genealogist and dedicated attorney who specializes in recovering Nazi-looted art, and his at-times-reluctant teenage son, Joey, as they embark on a quest to trace their family lineage and to find out more about an ancestor named Fioretta. This leads them to Randy’s famous grandfather, the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg; his great-grandmother Pauline, a music teacher in Prague; and then further and further back to the 500-year-old Jewish Ghetto in Venice. It’s a story of kings and mystics, but also of everyday people who lived through centuries of historical upheaval throughout Europe, taking Randy and Joey—and the viewer—on a journey from California to Austria, the Czech Republic, and Italy.

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